Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?

She’d spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened–apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn’t a...

When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

Do you know what they’re called? They’re the Shadows That Live, Zuze. They’re assassins.” “Like me,” said Zuzanna cheerfully.

I’m not looking for fate. I’m seventeen. I’m looking for kissing, and to move forward a few paces on the game board. You know, do some Living. (With my lips.)

Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She’d done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft...

My phone buzzes. It’s from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won’t be needing. —a) Hi. I’m Zuzana. I’m actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way...

There is intimacy in pain. Anyone who has comforted a sufferer knows it—the helpless tenderness, the embrace and murmur and slow rocking together as two become one against the enemy, pain

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you’re trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give...

The dead,’ she said. ‘And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you’d think they were corpses hanging on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements. […]...

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn’t stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have...

Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?… Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that?

Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony.

As long as you’re alive, there’s always a chance things will get better.

It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize...

…the air seeming to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place were a story about her.

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

The silence, she thought, was remarkable: a perfect, shimmering thing, and fragile. Like glass, if it shattered, it would never come back together again.

The sooner you learn to finish things, and as a matter of course finish your creative endeavors, the better. It took me a long time to learn that.

Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill,...

There was only present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn’t drive us mad.

In a dark layer of Esme’s memory there was a kiss. Vividly she recalled Mihai in the snow, naked and fanged. That kiss had conjured ancient passions a god had tried to erase, and Esme...

Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn’t. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might...

In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the...

La esperanza puede ser muy poderosa. (…) cuando sabes qué es lo que anhelas y lo mantienes como una luz dentro de ti, puedes hacer que las cosas sucedan, casi como magia.

I feel liquefied, like a cucumber forgotten in the crisper drawer, and I want to hold myself at arm’s length and carry me to the trash. Who is this sack of slush masquerading as me?...

And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you’d think they were corpses hanging on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements.

Love is a luxury.””No. Love is an element.”An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on.

You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? What have you had more of?

Life is you master, or death is.

Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.

Happiness wasn’t a mystical place to be reached or won–some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it–but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble...

I don’t believe in prayer, but I do believe in magic, and I want to believe in miracles.

I want to touch with my mouth. His mouth, with my mouth. Maybe his neck, too. But first things first: Make him aware I exist.It’s possible that he is already aware, if only in a...

The dead,” she said. “And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you’d think they were corpses handing on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements.” …...

War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It’s ugly, and you don’t even want to look at it let...

..and when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn’t realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in.

There are boys you look at and want to touch with your mouth, and there are boys you look at and want to wear one of those surgical masks everyone in China had during bird...

She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in...

She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

If only it were that easy to let go of hate. Just relax your face.

I think with world building, it’s important to create a sense of culture even if it is just a fantasy, and the best way to do that is to look at a real human culture...

I’m afraid they’re in love,” he said, concerned. “They don’t want to leave you.” He lifted one hand from her waist to gently brush a pair from her neck, where their wings fanned against her...

…something was starting to take shape, out of magic and will. Smoke and bone.

El amor es un elemento… Como el aire que se respira, o el suelo que se pisa.

Beautiful men and women with distorted shadows came and scorched their handprints onto doors before vanishing skyward, drafts of heat billowing behind them with the whumph of unseen wings. Here and there, feathers fell, and...

All evening long, real snow would fall from the ceiling to glitter on the lashes of dancing girls and ardent boys, but Neve and the Dreamer didn’t linger. They had other things to do: *all*...